


If Your Time to You is Worth Saving

by TheAutotheist



Series: Time Worth Saving [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Can be read as gen, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7369474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutotheist/pseuds/TheAutotheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard Snart died in the Oculus, in the Vanishing Point. So he wasn't expecting to wake up in Central City. And he definitely wasn't expecting to have a conversation with Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Your Time to You is Worth Saving

Len woke up.

No, that was wrong.

Len was awake.

Len became aware of the fact that he was awake. He was awake, but he wasn’t in the Oculus. He wasn’t in the Vanishing Point. He wasn’t on the Waverider. He was in Central City. More specifically, he was in one of his old safe houses in Central, from before he became “Captain Cold,” and before the Flash—or the Streak. There was a reason he’d never come back to this safe house, the thought just scratching at the back of his mind. Something important.

It burned.

In some not well-thought-out attempt to cover their tracks, Len had let Mick burn the place. It had been barely a year into the “life-time” sentence Lewis was serving, and one of the first times Len had had a chance to really strike out on his own.

The room looked just like Len remembered, and there were even plans still strewn out over the available tabletops. The one out of place thing, however, was Barry Allen sitting perched on one of the tables, in normal civilian clothes, instead of his Flash getup. He had his palms braced on the edge of the table and was staring at Len steadily.

Normally Len loved to taunt and poke and prod at the Flash, but he was so surprised to be in this place, and see that person here, that all he said was, “Barry?”

“Hello Leonard.”

Len’s hand dropped to his side to search for the handle of his cold gun, which wasn’t there. The straps of the holster were still attached to his thigh, but they hung loosely against his leg. Of course. He had Sara take the gun along with Mick back to the Waverider. So he had no weapon, and instead had to settle for glaring suspiciously at “Barry.”

Nothing put him on edge faster than someone referring to him with the wrong name. He paid attention to the things people called him. He’d worked long and hard to build up a reputation, after all. So he knew what names people used. Around others, depending on how compliant Mick was feeling at the time, he was either “Boss” or “Snart.” Alone, he would be “Len,” unless Mick was feeling particularly sentimental, then he would slip into “Lenny,” which was Lisa’s favorite nickname for him. The crew of the Waverider tended towards “Leonard” or “Snart,” or, if you were from 2166, “Mr. Snart.” Barry Allen’s little friends referred to him by his last name, or by the cute little supervillain nickname Ramon had given him, “Captain Cold.”

Barry Allen had never called him “Leonard” before.

“Who are you?” Len asked without dodging around it at all. Normally, he loved mind games and word play, but not when it was at his expense. Also, he was just tired. He was supposed to be dead, after all.

“Barry” only smiled at him. Len didn’t know what was going on, but whoever this imposter was, he had the smile down pat. It was that sad little smile Barry gave him when he tried to convince him to be a hero. He slipped off the table and walked a few feet closer so he was standing in front of Len, just out of arm’s reach.

“Where am I? Where’s my team?”

Barry smiled that same smile. It was infuriating to think Len was only proving Barry—the real Barry—right. “You wouldn’t understand,” this Barry said after a minute.

“I’m a pretty smart guy. And I’ve dealt with a lot of things recently that I probably wouldn’t have understood a few years ago.” Len crossed his arms. “So try me.”

Barry laughed. “Yes, I can see why this one” here he waved his hand in front of his chest to indicate his appearance, “likes you.”

“The Flash doesn’t like me. He just has that ridiculous hope in me.”

“The Flash.” Barry smirked and shook his head. “That’s right. All those speedsters love their little names.”

Len actually wished this Barry was in the red leather costume for once. It was a lot easier to face someone in a mask. Also, Len was annoyed he couldn’t intimidate the kid by towering over him. He was so used to being taller than most people, but Barry Allen could look him right in the eye.

Barry tilted his head. “You say you can understand. Then how shall I describe myself?” The sentence sounded awkward in Barry’s voice. “I was at the beginning and I will be at the end. I have already experienced the end and the beginning is yet to happen, and they are both occurring simultaneously. I am unstoppable and changeable. I control your lives and take no part in it. And yet, I am a part of everything.”

Len raised one eyebrow and gave Barry his most unimpressed look.

Barry just smiled and said, “I want to happen.”

Len dropped his arms from where they had still been crossed over his chest. “You sound like you are giving me a riddle to solve. Are you trying to stand here and tell me I am speaking with  _ time _ right now?”

Barry spread his arms wide, in a clear indication that Len had been correct.

“Time has a consciousness?”

“You sound so surprised.”

“Well, I didn’t imagine time as a… person. As something I can have a conversation with.”

Barry lifted his arms and looked at them. “Person isn’t the right word. I’m not actually here. I don’t actually have a body.”

“Time is a concept. It’s not a…” Here Len trailed off, because he didn’t really know what time was. And Rip did so enjoy pointing out how none of them knew as much about time travel as he did (until Mick was turned into Chronos, of course).

Barry lifted one eyebrow as he watched Len, perhaps waiting for him to finish. “People like to think of Time as a river. In some cultures, rivers have spirits, so you can think of me as the spirit of the river Time.”

Len frowned. “Doesn’t help.” He looked around the safe house again. “Why here? Why this place?” He looked back at Barry. “Why this appearance?”

Barry looked around the room. “It seemed like a good place from your past.”

Len frowned again. He wasn’t going to deny that. This was where he and Mick had first set out on their own. Where they'd first…

“And this?” He waved his hand at Barry. “Why Barry Allen?”

“You are already used to hearing things that defy what you think of as the laws of physics from the speedster.”

Len laughed out loud at that. When he’d seen the security footage of that blur interrupting his heist, he had no trouble accepting it was a man. Central City had been weird ever since the Particle Accelerator had exploded, and the Flash had fit in with that. Having a conversation with time, who was dressed up to look like that very speedster, was something else entirely.

“Okay, so I am having a conversation with time, who is currently dressed up to look like the Flash, Barry Allen. And we’re standing in a safe house that burned down twenty years ago. That about right?” Len crossed his arms again and quirked one eyebrow to give Barry a look.

Barry smiled, pleased. “Yes. Though, we are not actually standing in your old safe house. I haven’t sent you back, but have merely dressed it up to look like a location you know. I can change it.” Barry didn’t wave his hand or make any kind of movements, or do any of the flashy things Len had come to associate with the supernatural. But the safe house dissolved.

Len turned in a circle to look around. They were outside, on the street, at night. He glanced at the buildings to either side of the street and realized this was where he and Mick had had their showdown with the Flash. The scene shifted again, and this time they were in Saints and Sinners. Like each of the previous locations, the place was deserted. There wasn’t even a bartender behind the bar.

Barry rested one hip against the edge of the pool table and dropped one hand to the fake wood. He gave Len a patient look, but didn’t say anything else.

Len took a breath and met his eyes. “Why am I alive?”

Barry was pleased again. “All your questions, and you finally get to the one you really wanted to ask.”

“I remember the explosion. I  _ felt _ the explosion.”

“I pulled you out, of course. From Time, itself.”

“So… that’s something you can do?”

Barry loosely crossed his wrists in front of his body. “In certain places. In certain moments. The Vanishing Point, for instance.

“Rip and Mick did say time does not flow normally there.”

Barry inclined his head. “Precisely. You wouldn’t know this, but your friend the Time Master,” his lips quirked as he said the title, as if he was terribly amused by the concept, “would know it is forbidden to kill anyone in the Vanishing Point. Any prisoners they want to dispatch are taken back into the normal flow of Time.”

Len leaned against the side of the pool table as well, with his arms crossed. “Why?”

Barry smiled too feraly for the face he was wearing. He showed too many teeth, and his eyes had a bit of a manic gleam. The expression would have been much better on Mick’s face, than on Barry’s. “In some ways, the Time Masters were much too arrogant, but at least they understood that anyone who dies in the Vanishing Point becomes mine.”

Len stared at Barry. “Be someone else.”

Barry tilted his head. “Why?”

“Because you’re twisting up Barry’s youthful naivety. Barry Allen is too hopeful and,” Len rolled his eyes, but he did have a fond smile on his face, “good for the expression you just had on your face.”

In between blinks, Barry was gone, and instead, Lisa was standing in front of him. “Is this better?” She jumped up onto the pool table and let her ankles cross.

Len swallowed thickly. When he decided to sacrifice himself, he thought he was never going to see his sister again. And he knew Mick was going to have to tell her Len had died on the mission. He couldn’t even imagine how she was going to react, because he had no idea what he’d do if their positions were reversed. He didn’t know what he’d do if he had to listen to someone tell him his sister was dead.

And just like that, his chest hurt and he felt an overwhelming surge of  _ want _ go through him. At that moment, he wanted nothing better than to see the only two people in this world he loved. He couldn’t bear to think of the two of them dealing with his death together.

“No,” Len said honestly.

Lisa smiled, and just as quickly, she was gone. Sara instead perched on the pool table. The ache died down a bit, but it still felt wrong. “Perhaps one of your traveling companions?”

“Fine.” Len waved his hand dismissively. “What did you mean that anyone who dies in the Vanishing Point becomes…”

“Mine?” Sara prompted. “Time is in flux, a constant movement. Every moment is happening together. You view Time linearly. From one point to the next. I view Time as…” she paused to think. “As a stack of papers, one big block of dead trees. Looking through Time is like trying to look through that stack, to one dot on one page. The Vanishing Point is like a pen that sits beside the stack of papers. It is much easier to see. So when people die there, instead of disappearing back into the stack of papers, their timelines belong to me, and I can bend them as I see fit.”

Len wished, once again, that he had his gun. At the very least, being able to feel the handle under his palm would calm him. But with an empty holster, he felt defenseless. “So that’s what happened to me.”

“Correct,” Sara said cheerfully. “You and all those little Time Masters who your friends killed—”

“Like Declan.”

“And the ones caught in your explosion—”

“Like Druce.”

Sara nodded. “They belong to me now. I am erasing their timelines.” At Len’s surprised look, she laughed. “Not all of them, mind you. Just the parts they don’t need, the happy memories. I leave only the pain, and I roll them back and forth along those moments, like eternals yo-yos.”

Sara sounded completely calm as she said this. Len was just happy she wasn’t sporting Barry’s face anymore, because he didn't think he could handle hearing that coming out of the kid’s mouth.

Len had to swallow a few times and wet his dry lips before he could make his voice work again. “And what about me? What do you plan to do with me?”

Sara slipped off the table and moved to stand right in front of him. She was a good head shorter, though, so she had to crane her head back to see his face. In the next instant, she was replaced by Rip.

“That depends entirely on you, Leonard.” Once again, it was the wrong name, coming out of the wrong mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“I pulled you out of the Vanishing Point to thank you, actually. Those…” Rip’s eyes turned dark and stormy, and it wasn’t so strange. There were a few moments Len had seen anger like this on their captain’s face. “Those Time Masters thought they could control me, by creating the Oculus outside of Time. They used it to flip through and even move through the stack of papers, to any point they wanted. And then, they learned how to take that pen and rewrite various points.”

“Your metaphor is getting a bit heavy-handed,” Len drawled.

Rip smiled. “They  _ caged _ me within the Oculus, twisted me, and bent me to their will. So I wanted to thank you, for setting me free again.”

Len blinked. “It wasn’t even my idea. I was just the one with his hand on the trigger at the end.”

“A noble sacrifice, to be sure.” 

Now  _ that _ sounded just like Rip. So much so that Len rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t doing it to be noble.”

“Then why were you doing it?”

Len narrowed his eyes, but didn’t answer. Instead, he said. “So you brought me here to thank me. Then you’re welcome. What happens now?”

“Well…” Rip trailed off and looked around the bar. “I have what I wanted. Declan, Druce, and the others at my mercy. Time completely back under my control. And I will be dispensing punishment on those who dare try to manipulate me. Neither Time Master nor speedster stand a chance against me,” he said like some kind of avenging god.

“Speedster?” Len asked. “What are you talking about?”

Rip smiled, amused. “You didn’t know? Speedsters possess the ability to run so fast they can travel through time.”

Len stared at him. “What? Are you telling me time travel boils down to being able to run  _ fast enough _ ?”

Rip affected a very Rip-like half smile and pointed his finger at him as if to say “got it in one.”

Len sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. Has Scarlet been doing that too?”

“Oh yes. Several times by the time you left 2016.”

Unbidden, Len felt a pang of concern. God damnit. When did he start  _ caring _ ? “So is he on your hit list too?”

Rip waved his hand. “No, no. I give my cousin the means to punish their own speedsters. Nasty pieces of work, my time wraiths are. Besides, my cousin is quite fond of your  _ Flash _ .” He still said the name like it amused him.

Len distinctly felt the moment when he stopped being able to handle this. When it became too much for his brain to process, and he just wanted to curl up into a ball. But he kept going, regardless. So he only sighed and played along. “You cousin?” he asked.

“The Speedforce.”

“Okay.”

“My cousin endows speedsters with their preternatural abilities, picks favorites, and sends wraiths after the ones who seek to change Time. Actually, it was a conversation my cousin had with your Flash that gave me the idea to speak to you this way.”

Once he got back to 2016, Len was going to have to kidnap Barry so they could exchange time traveling, and talking-to-personifications-of-concepts notes. Speaking of…

“Fascinating as that all is, what happens to me?” He held out his arms. “As you said, I died in the Vanishing Point.”

Rip nodded. “Yes, you did.”

“Which means I am also at your mercy. My timeline in your hands.”

Rip smiled in a way that was the perfect representation of the phrase, “the cat that got the cream.” This expression, finally, looked out of place on Rip’s face. Rip was never that satisfied about anything, had never succeeded enough to be. “Indeed,” he said.

Len crossed his arms. If he expected Len to be frightened of the potential threat, he was sorely mistaken. Even what he claimed to have done to the Time Masters—erased their happy moments and sent them back and forth to constantly relive their worst memories—didn’t threaten Len too much. His life, after all, was made up of many more bad memories than good, and he’d learned to survive through them.

“So the question becomes, what to do with me now,” he said in imitation of his taunt to Bary once he’d found out his “secret” identity. “Are we going to stay here forever, talking, while you cycle through places and faces from my past?”

“I could do that, if you’d like,” Rip said honestly.

“Not particularly.”

The scenery changed again. This time, he found himself standing in the yard of the juvenile detention center he had been sent to when he was fourteen. The place he had first met Mick. He looked around the yard that he had never seen empty before, to find it once again devoid of any other people. When he turned back around, Rip was gone, and instead, Mick stood in front of him. Len’s heart clenched painfully, but outwardly, he only let himself frown a bit.

“Then I offer you a choice, Leonard Snart,” Mick said. Len would say it sounded unusual and wrong for Mick to speak like that, but ever since the Time Masters had got their hands on him, Mick had changed so much that Len wasn’t really surprised to hear something  _ wrong _ from him. “You are dead. You died at the Vanishing Point, and your timeline ended there. I am not a master of life and death, I only control Time. I can set you down at any point along your timeline of your choosing, and let you live your life from there.”

“Will I be able to change my past? Will I remember any of this?” Len asked. He squeezed his arms against his chest a little tighter.

“You already attempted to change your personal history once, and see how that worked out for you,” Mick said in a low voice, not angry, or pleased, but pointing out a fact.

“So if I go back, even if I try to change something, there’s nothing I can do. Because time wants to happen.”

“A lesson many learned the hard way.”

“Like Rip.”

Mick nodded once. Len thought it was a bit of a cheat, to take on this face, this body, to tell him this. Because Len wanted nothing more than to go back to the best times he had running with Mick as his partner, before the fire, before any of this nonsense. But still…

“What’s the other option?”

Mick smirked. Len knew that smirk. It was satisfaction. Mick didn’t want him to choose the first, “safe” choice. “The other option is that I can deposit you back in 2016, after your friends have returned from killing Vandal Savage.”

Both Len’s eyebrows went up at that. Well done, team. Good to hear they finally managed to accomplish something. God, Len hoped Mick got to burn the fucker.

“Outside of the end of your timeline, free to continue from there.”

“But? Didn’t you say you can’t bring me back from the dead, and my timeline ended in the Vanishing Point?”

“Yes. This is not a return to life. You will not be… the same.”

“What does that mean?”

“You won’t be exactly human.” Mick waved his hand at Len. “Not in this sense.”

“So I’ll be, what, like one of those metahumans?”

“No, not that either.”

Len frowned. “Then like what?”

“You will be an entity that has interacted with Time, and come out the other side of it. You will no longer be able to lead a normal life.”

Len actually laughed outright at that. “If you think I have lived anything close to a normal life since the Particle Accelerator exploded and changed my city, you are very much mistaken.”

Mick titled his head and studied Len. “So you have made your choice?”

“I’ll take not human over reliving the same old memories any day.”

Time seemed pleased with his choice. For a moment, Len thought he got a brief glimpse of the time stream as he had seen it outside the windows of the Waverider, before he found himself in Central City, standing in front of city hall. He would have thought Time was just shifting locations again, except there were people around this time. And none of them seemed to have noticed that Len had just appeared out of nowhere.

He looked down at his hands and ran his fingers over his face and up over his close-cropped hair. Everything seemed the same. He was even wearing the same clothes he had died in, complete with the slack holster for his cold gun. He walked up to the nearest pedestrian and said in his most charming voice, “Excuse me?”

The young woman started as if she had not noticed him there a moment before. “Yeah?” she asked tentatively.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Um…” The woman pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “10:23.”

Len gave her a slightly seductive smile. “Thank you very much.”

The woman blushed and stowed her phone. Flustered, she said, “S-sure,” and then hurried off. As she did, there was an afterimage left behind, and then another version of the woman splintered off and walked backwards the direction she had come from before Len had stopped her.

He narrowed his eyes at the three images. After a moment, they faded on their own. “Well, that’s interesting…” he muttered to himself. Aside from whatever the strange mirage had been, he seemed to be perfectly fine. Besides, he was thinking of ways that possibly seeing into people’s immediate pasts and futures could help on heists. Leonard Snart certainly wasn’t one to  _ not _ turn something like that to his advantage. But before any of that could happen, there were two people he had to find.

So he turned on his heel and started walking in the direction that would take him to the most recent safe house they had been using, where he was certain to find Mick and Lisa. He smirked to himself as he walked. He wondered if his conversation with Time would be a better story than hearing from Mick about how the team finally killed Savage. He couldn’t wait to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I've actually been playing around with this for a while. I recently convinced my roommate to watch The Flash and Legends, and when we came back around to The Runaway Dinosaur, I thought it would be fun to have Len have a similar conversation with Time. Can't you imagine Time as being super vengeful? 
> 
> And I did fully think out what the consequences of Len being returned to 2016 would be, so maybe if I'm bored, I'll make a sequel. But as it is, I like this as a standalone.


End file.
